I have had a question at the back of my mind for several years.
It constitutes a small crisis of faith that the view of the
universe as it has been presented to me is completely understood
as well as people think it is. I have asked several people, all
knowledgeable about science, and I have gotten different answers
from each. In fact the best answer I have gotten was from a
friend who knows his stuff really well, Bill Higgins, who told me
straightforwardly that he simply did not know the answer. Fair
enough. Certainly it is the sort of question that I expect would
have a well-known answer and the answer does not seem at all well-
known. The question appears to me to be perfectly straightforward
and one that anyone would ask, but then my background is
mathematical. There are probably very few people who look at what
they have learned in the field of biology who ask themselves if
something they have learned makes sense from the standpoint of
mathematical topology.

Well, rather than be mysterious, let me tell you what the question
is. Our genetic reproductive system is based on DNA. DNA is made
up of a very long molecule in the form of a double helix. That
means there are really two strands that run the length of the
molecule wrapping around each other, almost as if the molecule was
a very long ribbon that was twisted. It is twisted very many
times. If what I have been told is correct and I remember it, it
is twisted somewhere on the order of 100,000 times for human DNA.
This means that each strand goes around the other strand 100,000
times. When the two strands are ready to replicate they break
apart and each strand goes its merry way. This process takes on
the order of thirty minutes. Then each strand basically
reproduces a mate identical (but for possible mutations) to the
one it just lost. And, Voila!, reproduction has taken place. I
think I got that right. The textbooks and the NOVA TV programs
show diagrams of this happening always showing just a short
segment of the DNA with almost no twist. And everybody thinks
they completely follow what has just happened. Everyone but me
that is. I still have a bad feeling about that explanation. I am
trying to picture what happens when you have ten twists in the
section of the helix, never mind 100,000. Now the two chains are
each wrapped around the other ten times. Pulling them apart is a
little harder to picture. Unless the ends start spinning to
unwind you just push the twists down the helix where they bunch
up.

If that is not clear, try this experiment. Take two pieces of
thread each the same length, about a foot long, one black, one
white. Place them side-by-side and then twist them tightly
together so that they make one thick string made of a black strand
and a white strand. Now grab them toward the middle of the string
and separate the two strands, one black, one white, for maybe a
quarter of an inch. Now try to sharply pull the two threads
apart. Without the ends spinning very fast the threads just will
not separate. The same thing has to happen to the DNA molecule.
How fast does it have to be spinning in DNA? Well if there are
100,000 twists and it has to separate in about half an hour that
is 100,000/1800 revolutions per second. That works out to be
about 56 revolutions per second. That is not tremendously fast as
gasoline engines go, but it still is pretty fast as I picture
cellular biology actions happen. It must take a log of energy.
And it has to be very well organized so that we don't run into the
kinking that we would get with the threads. It is pretty close to
the rotational speed to a car engine. Maybe that is how thing
happen, but it seems like it would require a lot of energy to do
that. It makes the cell seem a lot more active than I had
imagined it was.

As one friend explained to me sagely, I was looking at it wrong.
These are not threads, he explained, but molecules. "They do not
have to do all that spinning because they are being separated by
an enzyme." "So?", I asked. "Well the enzyme does the
separation." "So how do the two strands separate without all the
untwisting?" "The enzyme does it." Now my respect for enzymes is
second to none. They are just super little proteins in my book.
That is mostly because I am not sure exactly what an enzyme can
do. But there is one thing I am almost certain an enzyme cannot
do. An enzyme cannot break the laws of mathematics. They are not
allowed an exemption from the mathematical laws of topology. If
two long chains of a molecule are twisted together no enzyme is
going to get them apart unbroken by any means but untwisting them.

Not quite so much energy is required if you can break a strand
where you want and rejoin it. Some people have claimed that is one
function of an enzyme. That may make this less of an logistical
feat, but not that much less. There still is a lot of untwisting
to account for.

So I really have two questions. One is how does the separation
handle all the untwisting. The other, which may sound a little
pompous, I admit, but I will ask it anyway. With all the people
who have studied DNA and how it works from high school biology to
laboratory study, why haven't more people asked themselves this
question? [-mrl]

CAPSULE: French thriller about a partially deaf woman who can read
lips. The skill proves to have unexpected upsides and downsides
when she gets involved with a parolee who wants to use the talent.
There are tense scenes but the plot is too much building up to one
particular sequence and then tidying up afterward. Rating: 6 (0
to 10), +1 (-4 to +4)

READ MY LIPS is an action thriller from France that features a
slow build of tension to a meager pay-off. I would feel a little
better about it as a film if I felt that it was a whole film.
Instead, I feel there is one really good scene. The rest builds
up to that scene and then squares things up after it. Admittedly
there is some suspense and some action in the build-up and the
tidy-up parts, but they are all mostly in service to one scene
that is fairly clever. One fairly good scene wrapped in some good
suspense is more than most crime films give the audience but not
quite enough to make this a standout film.

Carla Bhem (played by Emmanuelle Devos) has serious problems in
her job as a secretary in a contracting firm. She is nearly deaf
and totally marginalized to the point where she can barely hear
and she is barely seen. Certainly her workspace is the in the low
rent end of the office near the restroom and the copier. People
use her desk to leave half empty paper cups and if people spill
coffee on her desk in the process they usually do not even notice
they have done it. She is used as one more service to the working
staff. Her supervisor, however, suggests that she is over-worked
and should hire help. For one of the rare times she thinks she
can get a perk out of working in the office. She can choose the
type of person she wants as a helper. She has very specific
requirements.

The employment agency sends over a man, Paul Angeli (Vincent
Cassel). Carla is glad to have someone to help and who knows she
exists, but she is worried she may be training her own
replacement. She quickly discovers that Paul is a prison parolee
with no experience--not much of a threat. Carla decides to keep
him in that narrow range, too good for the bosses to fire but not
good enough to replace her. She is determined to help Paul hide
his past and to help him hold his job. She savors a little odd
sexual tension with Paul, but does not want to let on. She also
decides she can use Paul's criminal talents to move her up an inch
or so in office politics. However, when Paul discovers Carla
reads lips he thinks he knows an unorthodox way to put her skill
to use for him.

Paul and Carla play games of control on each other and allow a
little sexual tension to bloom. That is unusual in a film in
which the two main characters are not presented as being
particularly attractive people. Each of them is sly but in very
different ways. Toward the middle of the film things become a
little more complex and a little harder to follow. Part of the
problem in this part of the story is that a plot has been added
with Paul's parole officer. It strikes the viewer as an add-on of
little value to the main line of the plot. In fact, when it does
impact the main line it ties one hole up only by opening another.
In the last third of the film there is a turn for heavier violence
and blood. Carla is pulled by Paul into a hard-knocks world that
she is unprepared for. Some members of the audience were bothered
by the graphic depiction of torture, an unusual degree for a film
treated as an art film.

Though the film's style has been compared to Hitchcock, though
these are not the entirely innocent people that Hitchcock usually
would have used. They are game players. To emphasize any
connection to Hitchcock Alexandre Desplat's score even uses
violins for tension in style much like Bernard Herrmann would have
for a Hitchcock film. Jacques Audiard co-wrote and directed.
Perhaps the film delivers more as a character study than as a
thriller, but I rate at a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -
4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]